Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

Friday, October 25, 2013

Never is a long time

There are some things that people have come to expect to never
happen in their lifetime, such as erasing the line that divides North
and South Korea and peace in the Middle East.

Until
two weeks ago, another was Caltrans relinquishing control of the 587
homes it owns in Pasadena, South Pasadena and the Los Angeles
neighborhood of El Sereno, which sit directly in the path laid out for a
nearly five-mile road to connect the Long Beach (710) Freeway with the
Foothill (210) Freeway.

But, kind of like the
Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War which was somewhat unexpectedly
torn down after 28 years in 1989, that’s exactly what has occurred with
the freeway connector project.

After five
decades, the state transit agency is now being directed by the
Legislature to sell the homes in the so-called 710 Corridor, once dubbed
the “Corridor of Shame” by this newspaper for the shoddy way Caltrans
has historically handled its duties as landlords, or, more accurately,
slumlords.

This dramatic change occurred with
Gov. Jerry Brown signing Senate Bill 416. Authored by state Sen. Carol
Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge), and co-authored by Democratic Assembly
members Chris Holden of Pasadena and Mike Gatto of Glendale, SB416
allows Caltrans to sell the homes “as is,” without making any repairs.

This
is a significant difference from requirements spelled out in the
Roberti Act, so named for former Democratic state Sen. David Roberti,
which mandated repairs be made before a sale. However, like Roberti’s
legislation, the new law, which passed the Assembly by a vote of 77-0
and the Senate by a 38-0 margin, gives current and former tenants in
good standing the first right of refusal to purchase their homes at fair
market value. And, under Liu’s legislation, Caltrans still must make
repairs required by lenders or government assistance programs or provide
the occupants with a replacement.

Yet,
questions remain. Liu’s law requires that all single-family residences
be offered at an affordable price to present occupants who fall into
either low- or moderate-income categories. But, says Joe Cano, a
longtime Caltrans tenant and a member of the No 710 Coalition, “This is a
quandary.”

“Do these people really have the
money to fix the houses? Would these houses qualify for a mortgage, or
are they in such ill repair that the banks won’t even touch them?” he
recently asked the Pasadena Weekly’s Justin Chapman. Presently, 400 of
the homes in the 710 Corridor are occupied. The rest are vacant or too
dilapidated to live in.

Liu’s law “still puts
the tenants between a rock and a hard place,” Cano said. “Either way,
they’re being mistreated. It’s a real complex situation.”

The
law goes into effect on Jan. 1, but there is no set time line for
Caltrans to begin selling the homes, which the agency seems to be in no
hurry to do.

If a past audit of Caltrans’
property management is any indicator, it’s not likely that the agency
will be much better in the home sales department when the time finally
comes.

The California State Auditor last year
found that between July 2007 and December 2011 Caltrans, which did not
verify the eligibility of tenants to be charged below-market rate rents,
collected $12.8 million in rent but lost $22 million due to
underpayment by ineligible tenants. During most of that period, Caltrans
reportedly paid out another $22.5 million for questionable repairs.

The
audit also found that Caltrans spent an average of $6.4 million per
year on property repairs but could not demonstrate that repairs for 18
of the 30 projects reviewed by auditors were reasonable or even
necessary. The agency authorized repairs that far exceeded the potential
rental income of the property. For 20 of the 30 properties reviewed,
Caltrans authorized repairs for which it will take more than three years
worth of rental income to recover the costs, according to the report.

In
addition to that, the audit found that Caltrans estimated that the
market value of all the parcels was $279 million, when the actual sale
price for many or potentially all of the residential parcels could be
roughly 80 percent less than the estimated market value, in part because
of restrictions contained in the Roberti Act.

Making matters
even worse for tenants is Caltrans’ assertions that it cannot put the
homes up for sale until 2015, when an alternative connector is chosen
from five options, one of them construction of a massive tunnel
underneath the land where the surface connector was set to go.

With
all the planning that’s already been done on the proposed tunnel plan,
which is almost universally opposed by people living in Pasadena and
South Pasadena, Caltrans should already know which properties would be
affected by tunnel construction. It’s hard to imagine why another two
years is needed to make that determination.

Perhaps now might
be the time to get the transit agency out of the real estate business
altogether and turn over responsibility for these properties to people
who know what they are doing.

We believe a
board of concerned citizens, and perhaps already sitting elected
officials from the three affected communities, should be formed to work
with Caltrans in order to ensure the state transit agency expeditiously
does what it’s been told by the Legislature to do with those homes and
does not screw people out of their rights.

Just
as it still remains unlikely that we’ll ever see a united Korea or a
Middle East without war, the evidence tells us that without supervision
and vigilant monitoring, Caltrans will more than likely not do the right
thing when it comes to selling those properties.